Amazing Madelyn Grace: Only the beginning.

Hello, and welcome to Madelyn’s update blog! It’s been a long and exhausting few days, and it will be a long and exhausting road to recovery, but we all know that with Madelyn’s strength and spirit that she will be better than ever some day soon.

To start at the beginning, when our childhood home caught on fire on Thursday, Dec. 22, Madelyn was in the house. With the help of the Centerville fire department and local law enforcement personnel, firemen and former HCHS classmates McKale Baltz and Logan Hill rescued her. From there, she was taken to the Natchez Trace emergency room in Dickson and then transported to Skyline Medical Center in Nashville. She’s been here ever since.

Madelyn suffers from 11% second degree burns on her face, hands, feet and shoulder and 2% third degree burns on her head and on her thigh. She also has severe lung damage from smoke inhalation, resulting in a breathing tube as soon as she entered the emergency room. Since then, they switched the tube out for a tracheotomy which, according to the doctors and nurses, is more sterile and easier to help clear her lungs. She will be on a ventilator for two to three weeks, and they started clearing out her lungs with a procedure called a bronchial cleanse. Her lungs will just need lots of time to heal, and the doctors and nurses at Skyline have told us that this will be a long process.

She had surgery on Friday to start the process of repairing the skin where her burns are. They will go in and do more work in the next few days, but every doctor and nurse say that she looks good and that the main focus is her lung health. Her hands are some of the most severely burned, as well as the spots on her head and thigh. Her hair is also singed, which just kills us because if you know Mad, you know she loves that hair. Her day nurse Sierra was able to wash and brush it out, and we appreciate the time and care that she put in to doing that.

Her vitals have been stable since she was admitted to the emergency room, which has given us a lot of peace. She’s had good, stable nights and is not getting worse. It can only go up from here!

She’s been heavily sedated since the accident, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t given these poor nurses a run for their money. We all know Madelyn as being the strongest one in the room; she lifted 140 pound girls as a cheerleader from the time she was in seventh grade up until her sophomore year of college. She’s had a few tussles with the nurses, but they tell us that it’s good that she has that strength to fight. She hasn’t beaten them up the last few hours, which is good for them and means she is probably starting to get used to the poking and prodding. She’s got that fight in her!

So here we sit, on Christmas Day, just the most thankful that Madelyn is here to spend it with us. It’s very scary and our hearts are broken, but we also rejoice in the fact that Madelyn has resilience and a desire to get better.

Madelyn always talked about how her favorite hymn is “Amazing Grace,” most likely to coincide with her middle name. I’ve thought a lot about her middle name since the accident: Grace.

Ephesians 2:8 says “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” Madelyn is faithful, kind and an encouraging friend to the people around her. She is gracious, impactful and has a heart that loves others so deeply. The love she has been shown over the past few days has been so uplifting to see and hear. There’s a whole community out there that loves her and will care for her in the coming days.

Updates will be posted as her healing journey continues. We are so grateful, and I don’t think I can say that enough.